Fund manager Woodford Investment Management has provided £15m ($19.1m) in capital for UK-based dementia treatment research fund Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) through investment trust Woodford Patient Capital Trust, the Financial Times has reported.
The investment, which added to contributions from limited partners including drug producers Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Takeda and Astex, took DDF’s total funding to £100m.
DDF plans to invest up to £230m in the next five years. It has five portfolio companies so far: Cerevance, Tiaki Therapeutics, DDF ChemCo, Alector and Gen2 Neuroscience.
Tetsu Maruyama, chief scientific officer of DDF, said: “The DDF has a unique approach and this first year of investing has shown clearly how our new way of focusing investment and deploying an expert team can unlock areas of dementia research that would otherwise be underdeveloped or unacknowledged.
“We draw on the combined expertise of our network and collaborate creatively with researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, charities and industry.”